Featured Toyota Reveals EV Prototypes Ahead of 2020 Launch

greenwash;
".... the practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology or company practice ..... "
What is greenwashing? - Definition from WhatIs.com

you keep using that word - I don't think that word means what you think it means...

Quick charging is nothing - without back-to-back usage. Back-to-back usage is the core element necessary on an EV, to assure they are as practical as a gas car, just like refilling gasoline needs to be back-to-back.
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That's misrepresentation of benefit. It's a nice to have, not a necessity.

A single rapid charge will cover a large chunk of the population.

One sizes fits all is not a requirement.

 

That’s Asian advertising for yah

 

I really doubt they left any car footage on the edit room floor. They just didn't have very much that they are willing to show in public... yet.

 

Okay I think we can agree - that at least one QC (after a full charge) gives some amount of decent range & is better than nothing. Maybe customers will not mind? - which makes me curious now .... to find out if Nissan makes the proper representation about their DC charging/thermal dynamics.

 

Yes, and I'll add there is definitely a group who would have that need... but it would be an expectation of a premium model, not a standard.

 

Sandy Munro revealed that the Model 3 Tesla has an integrated cooling and heating system. In cold weather, excess heat from the battery, power electronics, and motor can be routed to the cabin. In the heat, the same heat pump cools the battery, electronics, motor, and cabin. This unified approach to heating and cooling makes the Model 3 especially efficient. Although it might be replicated by air ducts, valves, and fans, they would either invade the cabin or add external dimensions.

I don't fault Toyota for trying to stay air cooled except I've had to deal with:

• Gen-1 battery thermal problems
• Prius Prime battery and control 'issues' in the cold

So I've lost interest in air cooled versus liquid cooled (i.e., battery thermal management.)

Bob Wilson

 

What do you considered an attractive car?

MEH!!

 

Gee I guess I was right after all!!

 

Also:


Bob Wilson

 

This is more like it! All cars that are stock need to be improved upon by the vision of the owner!

 

Pity that thoughtless woman stood in front of the juicy Microbus. Bring on the new EV Kombi - in Campervan form!!!! I have fond memories of my '74 and '77 Microbuses. If I were to restore a vehicle, this is what I'd consider - but they're worth a fortune for an old rusty shell..

 

This is from 4 years old Kia Soul EV with 75k km:


I don't have better picture but I would say that SOH is at 89.2%. Not a bad result for forced air cooled battery.

 

This might be a bit more readable:

 

Strong battery thermal management is a bandaid to cover the fact that the battery chemistry can't handle heat and the batteries themselves produce a lot of heat during high current use. Tesla uses high energy batteries, which is another way of saying low power batteries, which means they have high series resistance and thus produce a lot of heat under high current loads. The problem with strong thermal management is that it's heavy and sucks power like crazy. The correct longer term solution is batteries that can handle higher temperatures combined with lower series resistance. This results is less weight, less complexity and higher efficiency ultimately leading to lower cost.

This exact problem is one of the reasons there is a push to Silicon Carbide power electronics - they can handle higher temperatures and have lower losses compared to silicon, thus leading to easier cooling and higher efficiency. Right now toyota cools the power electronics strongly but SiC will eliminate that cost and complexity.

Doing the same for batteries is the correct solution but, as I always say, current batteries stink. Water cooling and the need for 350kW charging are bandaids to cover these issues. If you have a 450 mile range, 50kW charging is enough, if you have a 600 mile range, L2 charging is enough, and if you have batteries that can handle 85C, passive cooling is enough.

 

Please keep us informed about the make and model of cars with such batteries.

Just to make sure it isn't just Tesla, do you consider a Hyundai IONIQ to be such an advanced battery vehicle?

Bob Wilson

 

This sounds like why toyota/panasonic produced their batteries, but in reality at the pack level the tesla/panasonic battery pack is lower weight and cost. One of the brillance of the toyota manufacturing system is it produces higher quality with lower cost individual parts. That is what tesla/panasonic have done. The long rang tesla pack is about 6 kg/kwh compared to 13.6 kg/kwh in the prius prime. Of course the larger park gives some weight savings but the air cooled toyota pack is over twice as heavy than the liquid cooled "more complex" pack per unit energy. At least today these liquid cooled batteries appear to be more efficient. That should not be a surprise. Liquid cooled internal combustion engines are more efficient and reliable than air cooled in automotive applications when similar power/torque are compared.

Compare Side-by-Side

cooling is well understood. SiC for power electronics should be better as it is more efficient, but if enough power flows, liquid cooling may be better than air cooling. More efficient just may require a less expensive cooling system.

I don't understand the goal. If liquid cooled packs can use less expensive and lighter cells from the system level why not use them. In the future we may get to some sodium solid state that require heat conditioning instead of cooling, and you can use resistive, but in current lithium ion why restrict charging power because you want to use a more expensive air cooled battery pack.

Toyota didn't think cell cost for liquid cooled cells would fall this fast and is looking toward solid state, but ... liquid cooled lithium ion likely will continue to be less expensive for the next decade.

 

But can you really compare 8 kWh pack that outputs ~66 kW and must cope with the real world power usage in traffic basically the same as ~60 kWh pack in a Tesla?

When you scale up the capacity the weight won't scale up linearly, because if you scale up Prime pack to 60 kWh, then you would get a car normally capable of outputting 500 kW.

For normal EV you would have to scale up Prime capacity by a factor of 7, but power output could be scaled only by 2. You may end up with the pack around 7-8 kg/kwh.

 

When such batteries are commercialized, electric vehicles will become interesting.

And a conventional gas power train is around 1-2kg/kWh, and that includes the power train, not just the energy storage solution. This is why I keep saying modern batteries stink.

 

You may want to rethink your word choice considering EV's are entirely exhaust-less. Therefore, it is your car that "stinks."